Her: What the...Is the furniture in this room made of...penguin and turtle shirts? And it smells like rodent poo in here. Wait a minute! I've heard of you from my girlfriends.

Reaches over and rips off man's mustache

Her: You're that guy who hits on me every week! I can't believe I was fooled by you just adding a mustache and that fake accent! I'm so out of here! Hey, wait...why are you putting on that mangy dress?

Him:(creaky old woman's voice) You insulted my dear son in the most meanest of ways. What makes you think that you can leave now...alive? Squirrel army, attack!

thurdl01

Ldyandrea wrote:I'd be willing to bet if they added up all of the revenues generated from shirt designs that include all of those things, they'd immediately reject it as a completely counterproductive move. Those shirts get votes, and they make money. End of story.

Slogan shirts get votes, sell well, and make money. And are banned in almost every derby, even those allowing text, because woot has decided that they value creativity of design ahead of being just another site with a lot of slogan shirts.

Video game characters sell well, and are banned more often then not in the derby.

Really, this argument doesn't hold water. Woot bans plenty of things from derbies that would sell well because they are looking for originality and creativity. When they see something being overused, it gets banned for awhile.

DJTweekNYC

A LOL'ed out loud when I read this writeup. Brilliant on the Woot side. I admit, I was angry and one of the haters this week in the derby, but after much thought and reflection, I decided I don't care. If you can get away with it, and pay some rent in the process, more power to you. Not a buy for me but great writeup. Way to erase any sour feelings.

samzzz

gobak2sleep

Darquis wrote:On a more serious note, woot approves (I assume) the write ups. If woot is of the opinion that this shirt is too similar or derivative of Impostor...why the f didn't they just reject it to begin with?

TonyGreyfox

derkis wrote:Is ramyb a talented artist? No (sorry, his abilities as a draftsman are lackluster, but that's another post entirely).

Does ramyb produce creative designs, or demonstrate any qualities of a captial-A Artist? No.

I have to disagree on these points, at least partially. Ramy *has* shown the ability to create some interesting, good-looking and stylish designs that I've seen (not that I have the time to point them out just now, maybe later). But those are almost always a secondary effort to the cutesy bunnies, penguins, etc. I've posted a couple of times encouraging him to focus more on the more creative stuff, but of course he's going to follow the money and as long as his horde keeps voting for his designs he's going to keep winning, and his shirts will keep printing. Welcome to democracy.

It's disappointing. There are a lot of very creative shirts in this week's derby, at least one of which will have to wait for the next Double-Take to get the recognition it deserves.

MachineAmbition

The write-up actually seems not so funny to me. If Woot can't reject something they think is so similar that it warrants this type of critique, there is something wrong with their ability to make or enforce their rules and there is no point to their supposed lamentation regarding the democratic process.

I understand that it's frustrating to have to prohibit each individual cute animal every derby, but there are a lot of options. Change the way people can vote, for instance. Instead, Woot whines and collects money on it, and it's hard to respect that. Directly insulting an artist like this isn't classy, no matter how much he may deserve it.

That said, I'll still buy the shirts I like that are without penguins, bunnies, turtles and dinosaurs. So carry on, I suppose.

MyStro023

No text, numbers, garble or anything resembling a written code, language or similar artificial communication.

No Mario, Star Wars, Star Trek, Starscream or any other pop culture references (including that one).

No bunnies, kittens, giraffes, penguins, turtles, zebras or any other cute animal.

Nothing cute, or even close to being cute. Ever.

No David Bowie.

Can we add two for the next derby?

No Black shirts

No Gray Shirts

Seriously, like 95% of submissions feel like they are on one of those base colors. Half of my Woot Shirts are on black. I've now told myself that the Tee has to be amazing for me to buy a black shirt here again.

kitcatbrat

Seriously, like 95% of submissions feel like they are on one of those base colors. Half of my Woot Shirts are on black. I've now told myself that the Tee has to be amazing for me to buy a black shirt here again.

Is it just me or are the black shirts slightly smaller than the rest? It seems like my gray shirts are a little bigger than normal and my black ones are a little more snug than normal. Either that or I only wear the black shirts on my fat days.

shatteringimage

no1

kitcatbrat wrote:Is it just me or are the black shirts slightly smaller than the rest? It seems like my gray shirts are a little bigger than normal and my black ones are a little more snug than normal. Either that or I only wear the black shirts on my fat days.

swankyspoon

dubdubdub

I probably missed this being covered in the threads, but when/why did Woot remove the link to Imposter off of the "Links" thingie? It was there when I looked this morning.

LINKS:
Melting Defenses
School
<--Where did link to Imposter go?

First I thought they pulled it because seki was listed as the submitter of Imposter even though they announced it was a collab. But then if you look at Imposter, its links point to at least 1 Ramy submitted shirt.

and as for this...

profbrendan wrote:So you do a google search for "punk penguin" (the two prevailing elements in this design), and look what happens to come up:

This is also for sale, as a shirt, from this site. Aside from the whole Imposter angle, duzzat qualify as "similar shirts exist"?

That shirt you linked to is totally different. In addition to Ramy giving them all headphones, the mohawked penguin is standing second from the right. In Ramy's shirt, mohawked penguin is clearly standing in the center. Also, Ramy's shirt is colorized.

kevlar51

midgerock wrote:Oh a woot veto would have worked. Veto says "no" to something. Woot has the final say on what they print. As to Ramyb stuff selling, well that's it.

My point is, Woot very easily could have rejected this shirt for "similar shirts exist" (see the write-up), but they chose not to. Why would giving them a veto power have changed this outcome?

Ldyandrea wrote:As a longtime and frequent purchaser, I can tell you I've bought quite a few of Ramyb's designs, and I don't buy any shirt unless I really like it and think it's wearable. Just because something is commercially popular shouldn't de-legitimize it.

That's really not what I said, I'm sorry if you took it as such. Any purchase from a unique user is perfectly legitimate. I classified shirt purchases from non-unique users for the purposes of extra-voting accounts as "otherwise." That goes for any shirt sold.

profbrendan

dubdubdub wrote:That shirt you linked to is totally different. In addition to Ramy giving them all headphones, the mohawked penguin is standing second from the right. In Ramy's shirt, mohawked penguin is clearly standing in the center. Also, Ramy's shirt is colorized.

Really? The position of the penguins makes it dissimilar? That's silly. Conceptually, they aren't very different at all.

Group of penguins, one's got a mohawk 'cause he's cool. That's the concept.

Ramy adding headphones and using color does not differentiate that. If different colors and minor details made a design unique enough to pass muster, the overwhelming majority of shirts rejected due to the "Similar Shirts Exist" rule would be in the clear. Just look at the "World Nomination" debacle for proof.

I'll even go out on a limb and say that I doubt Ramy intentionally ripped off this particular design (from anyone other than himself, that is). But frankly, that doesn't matter. The rejection of a shirt for the reason of similarity hinges only on whether a closely related design already exists, not if the artist intended to consciously rip something off. (Legally, that's something else entirely.) Looking at the design I referenced, it's not like it's a mega-popular shirt all over the web, but the fact is that it existed previous to Ramy's design. I think most artists would agree with me that a good practice when designing shirts is to first do a simple Google search and see if your idea has been done already. If it has, well, move on to something else.

dubdubdub

profbrendan wrote:Really? The position of the penguins makes it dissimilar? That's silly. Conceptually, they aren't very different at all.

Group of penguins, one's got a mohawk 'cause he's cool. That's the concept.

I forgot to use the sarcasm tags when I posted that... Didn't you notice the first part of my post was the tin hat conspiracy theory stuffs asking why Woot felt the need to remove the link to Imposter from the list of links on the main page? I'm with you. This whole thing has been a long running sad sad joke, which is why I only shop woot once every 5 or 6 months anymore.

I've only in the last two weeks started looking at the derbies again because a friend of mine has been putting in entries. I saw the Imposter Revisited entry (and that it won) and that for some reason Woot changed the list of links to remove Imposter so I felt like sharing my two cents with woot since I've not been sharing any dollars with them lately.

profbrendan

dubdubdub wrote:I forgot to use the sarcasm tags when I posted that... Didn't you notice the first part of my post was the tin hat conspiracy theory stuffs asking why Woot felt the need to remove the link to Imposter from the list of links on the main page? I'm with you. This whole thing has been a long running sad sad joke, which is why I only shop woot once every 5 or 6 months anymore.

I've only in the last two weeks started looking at the derbies again because a friend of mine has been putting in entries. I saw the Imposter Revisited entry (and that it won) and that for some reason Woot changed the list of links to remove Imposter so I felt like sharing my two cents with woot since I've not been sharing any dollars with them lately.

Heh, whoops, sorry 'bout that. Got a little overzealous.

I'll do a save-face move and just say that's a stock response for anyone who feels like defending this design, or ramy's somewhat questionable practices. :D

Woot.com is operated by Woot Services LLC.
Products on Woot.com are sold by Woot, Inc., other than items on Wine.Woot which are sold by the seller specified on the product detail page.
Product narratives are for entertainment purposes and frequently employ
literary point of view;
the narratives do not express Woot's editorial opinion.
Aside from literary abuse, your use of this site also subjects you to Woot's
terms of use
and
privacy policy.
Woot may designate a user comment as a Quality Post, but that doesn't mean we agree with or guarantee anything said or linked to in that post.